10 Things Everyone Forgets About Batgirl

Cassandra Cain is the Daughter of David Cain and Sandra Wu-San, the woman who would become Lady Shiva. Cassandra was trained from birth with the intent of becoming the perfect bodyguard for Ra’s al Ghul. David used actions to communicate with her instead of words, and because of this, those areas of the brain that normally deal with speech and language gave Cassie the ability to read the actions of others through their body movements and to predict their next move, especially in combat.

Having limited Cassandra’s exposure to only those that he deemed necessary, David Cain controlled his daughter’s world. When she was eight, he decided to take her training to the next level and took her on a “hit”. The man to be killed was Faizul, a numbers runner from Macau. Cassie had no idea that what she was doing was anything different than her normal training… until she struck the deathblow. There, Cass saw death for the first time and it traumatized her. She immediately abandoned her father and ran away.

Wracked with guilt and fear, Cassandra Cain traveled the world for nine years until she ended up in Gotham City just as it was cut off from the rest of the planet by an earthquake. She became one of Oracle’s many operatives throughout the city and, after saving James Gordon from her father David, was awarded the Batgirl identity.